At the Corner of You and Me
by mosylu
Summary: Caitlin's secret weighs on her, but turns out (as always) that Cisco is there to help her carry the load. Killervibe friendfluff, written just after 3.04.


(A/N) Written just after 3.04

* * *

Caitlin shifted her weight from foot to foot, considering the rows of boxes. Glossy women with shiny hair in different shades smiled out at her, promising that her hair could look like that too, smooth and even and not streaked with ice-white.

She pressed the thought down, down, down.

She picked two boxes off the shelf and scowled over them. Was she more of an Amber Shimmer? Or a Summer Chestnut?

And there had been that Golden Sunset one …

"Looking for a change?"

She shrieked and jumped backward, dropping both boxes. Cisco yelped too. "Wow. Jumpy much?"

"What are you doing here?" she asked, staring.

He hoisted his shopping basket, which had a gallon of Rocky Road, a can of whipped cream, and a jar of violently red maraschino cherries. "Ice cream run."

"We're three miles from your apartment and there are a lot of places where you could get ice cream between here and there."

"I was on my way to your place," he said. "It's been a while since we hung out."

She picked up the boxes and put them back on the shelf, waiting for him to comment. Daring him to comment. Half-wanting him to comment.

He didn't.

She crossed her arms. "I didn't get your text."

"Yeah, that's because I didn't text you. I figured you'd have a harder time slamming the door in my face if I came bearing ice cream."

"I would slam the door in your face because you didn't text me." She'd never slammed the door in his face. Not even once.

He didn't bring that up. "And if I did text you, you'd be all, 'Oh, not tonight, I'm tired, see you tomorrow."

"Maybe I really am tired. Maybe I want an early night." So tired she was at Rite Aid at 9:45 at night, staring at their hair dyes.

He leaned in. "Or maybe you're keeping secrets, Caitlin. Frosty secrets."

She gasped. "Francisco Ramon, did you _vibe on me_ in the _shower?_ "

He actually reeled back a step. "What? _No! What!_ … _No!_ Wait, what did you do in the shower?" He paused. "Okay, that sounded grosser than expected. Um, pretend I didn't say that and let me rephrase?"

"So what are you doing here?"

"Geez, really? After what you did today?"

"I didn't do anything today," she said a little too quickly, her voice a little too high.

He raised his brows. "Uh-huh. We left you alone in a room - "

"Barry was in there."

"Barry was in the mirror and you made sure he didn't see you."

Which hadn't taken all that much doing, honestly. Barry wasn't very observant.

"Anyway, you plus empty room plus thing that needed to be cold - " He threw out his arms like a faith preacher. The basket still in his hand knocked several promises of pretty hair to the floor. "And behold! A miracle! It was encoldened!"

"Encoldened isn't a word," she muttered, crouching to pick up the boxes.

He crouched with her. "Caitlin. Come on. It was like you wanted to be caught."

She regretted her choice to knot her hair back into a low bun and cover it with a knit hat. She would have loved to let her hair fall in front of her face as she put boxes back on the shelf. "You keep saying you're the brilliant technical genius. Maybe your machine did it."

"Part of being a brilliant technical genius is knowing when your machine ain't gonna work for shit," he retorted. "When I took it apart, I could tell - it wasn't gonna work for shit. So that leaves you. Al'Har'tol'me," he mumbled very fast.

"What?"

"Uh. Harry. Uh. Told me. That it wasn't our machine. Before he left."

"Is that what he said?"

"But _anyway,"_ he said loudly. "I would have figured it out myself. Eventually. Something's up with you."

She picked up the box of Amber Shimmer and shoved it back into its spot on the shelf.

"Just - tell me, okay? I mean, it's not like I don't already know, but I kind of want you to actually tell me. I know I shut you out when my powers came in, and I'm sorry, but - "

"Your ice cream is dripping," she said.

He looked down at it, distracted. "Just condensation, it'll - "

She reached into the basket, feeling her hands chill, and set her fingertips to the lid. She mapped the temperatures - the warmth of the air, the coolness of the cardboard, the chilly water rolling off it, the soft but still frozen outer edges of the dessert inside, the cold, cold core.

Mist swirled, Cisco shivered, and the carton frosted over like the inside of an old freezer.

She pulled her hand away, curling her fingers into her palm.

"Oh," Cisco said in a very small voice.

She swallowed. "You said you knew." Her voice shook.

"I did! I do. I - " He breathed. "I just need a moment to absorb the, uh, the empirical evidence you've presented here."

They stood in the hair-care aisle. The pretty, glossy women with their pretty, shiny hair beamed out at them without a care in the world. Overhead, one of the lights flickered. A herd of middle-schoolers out too late on a school night shrieked with laughter in the seasonal aisle. From the speakers in the ceiling, the store's corporate-approved easy listening playlist rickrolled them.

"Hey," he said softly. "Hey, this doesn't change anything, okay? We'll figure this out. We'll figure out how to - how to work this. We - " He put his hand out and she shrank away. He stopped, clearly wounded.

"I'm - I'm not always in control," she whispered. "I don't want to hurt you."

He bit his lip. "All right. Fair." He peered at her, then touched the hair above his ear. "Uh. Is, uh, that why you're buying hair dye?"

She looked at him blankly for a moment, then gasped and fumbled for the compact in her purse. A small splotch of ice-white peeked out of her hat. She ripped it off and gaped at the stripe running back into her bun. She'd examined every inch of her head before leaving home, and this slender blond streak was new. "Oh," she whimpered. "No, oh, god."

"Whoa! Easy. Easy. It'll be okay." He tilted his head. "Actually it's kind of fun. Punk."

"I'm not punk," she said. "I am very not punk."

"No," he said. "I know, but - oh my god, what did you do on the other side?"

She brushed her fingers over the fuzzy, prickly edges where she'd cut out that very first streak. "Panicked," she muttered.

"Was this after whatever happened in the shower?"

She nodded.

He took in his breath and let it out in a long whoosh. "So," he said, hefting his basket. "Clearly, we have a lot to talk about. I've got the ice cream already, so you wanna get out of here?"

She looked at the grubby linoleum with the fluorescent lights shining off it. "I - don't. Really. Eat that. Anymore."

"Ice cream?" His voice cracked.

She swallowed. "It's - I get cold."

He studied the basket. "What about hot chocolate?"

"Yes! Yes, that, still." Very much so.

"Okay. Sweet. I'll get some of that. Actually I saw this thing? Bailey's chocolate cherry something. Honestly it might as well have said 'put me in hot chocolate right fucking now,' on the label - "

"Um," she said.

"C'mon!"

"I - I just - alcohol. I'm not sure. Comfortable," she corrected herself. "I'm not comfortable anymore with - with things that lower my inhibitions and - "

He took in a breath and let it out. "Okay," he said. "Okay. So. I'll get that for me. Meet me at checkout?"

She nodded and watched him go. She looked at the hair dye again and decided she was definitely a Golden Sunset, and put the box in her basket. She pulled her knit cap back on, tugging it low on her forehead.

She stood in the checkout line wondering if maybe she should just drop the basket where it was, run out of the store, get in her car, and move to another state. Arizona, maybe. Where it was hot enough that she might never get cold again. Or Alaska. Where it was cold enough that her powers would never be noticed.

She didn't want to be anywhere but Central City.

"Hey," he said brightly from behind her. "If you're looking for a change, there's always this."

"No," she said. "No. I'm not looking for a change, I want everything to remain exactly the same."

He lowered the bright pink can. "It's, uh, spray-in hair color for Halloween. It washes out in, like, three days. But. Message received."

She made a production out of retrieving her store card and didn't answer.

At her place, she made two cups of hot chocolate and went to find Cisco, who'd wandered off. She didn't have to think hard to guess where.

"Holy shit, Caitlin," he said when she walked into her bathroom. "You did this?"

She sighed. The slender icicles cascading from her showerhead dripped mournfully, only about half-melted. "I didn't even get to wash my hair." She held out the second cup.

He took and slurped the first sip. "Okay, you take the award for Worst Shower Ever away from me."

She raised her brows.

"Without getting into the nasty details, we were getting kind of - acrobatic? And I slipped."

She winced.

"Yup. He broke his wrist and I was single before we left the hospital." He leaned into the shower stall, squinting at the showerhead. "But this - hooo boy. Did the pipes freeze, too?"

"Oh," she said. "Oh, no. I didn't think of that. My homeowner's insurance is never going to cover it if they did. We've only gotten down to the fifties this fall."

He made a motion as if to put his arm around her, and stopped. "Joe's got that insurance guy he swears by," he said brightly. "Ben something. He'll swing it."

She sighed again and went out to the living room. He puttered around the kitchen for awhile and came out with a mountain of ice cream in a bowl, balanced on top of his mug of hot chocolate, and the whipped cream can and the jar of cherries stuffed into his armpits. He unloaded everything onto the coffee table and commanded, "Mug."

She held hers out and he added whipped cream and a cherry. He decorated his own, sipped, and said, "Whenever you feel okay about alcohol again, you gotta try the Bailey's in this. Seriously."

She scrubbed whipped cream off her nose and didn't answer.

He ate a few spoonfuls of ice cream, scraping crevasses down the mountainside. She waited for him to start grilling her - who-what-when-where-how. But he didn't.

Very, very quietly, she said, "Are you scared of me?"

"Like, more than usual?"

"Don't joke," she begged him.

He stirred a melty puddle at the edges of his ice cream Everest. "No," he said. "I'm not scared of you."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"You were scared of her."

He put his spoon down and looked at it for awhile. "I was freaked out," he said in a low voice. "I'd just been to a different universe. I saw my face get killed to death. Again. I saw Zoom. And D-Deathstorm. And - her. Yeah. She was scary. She was hard and nasty and just enough you that I could get through to her, and maybe that freaked me out the most. And then I came back and I found out Dante - " He choked.

She reached out and squeezed his knee.

"Everything was falling apart. Starting with me. And I saw you shutting down after Jay - you know. And I couldn't even handle the thought that you might change into her. That this Earth might become that one, even in a little way."

"Now it has," she said, and her voice shook.

He looked up. "I wasn't afraid of her powers, Caitlin. I'm still not. I was afraid of how cold - no." He shook his head. "Wrong word. How small her heart was. It only had room for Ronnie and he was gone, so it had no place for anyone or anything. Your heart could never be that small, and I'm sorry I ever thought so."

She tapped her finger against the side of her mug. It was deliciously warm. "Cold contracts things."

"Not even absolute zero," he said. "I believe that."

She had to look away from him, her throat knotting. She didn't know yet whether her tears would freeze, and she didn't want to find out tonight. "I'm going to make myself another one," she said, hoisting her mug. "You?"

"I'm good."

When she came back with a full mug, he waited until she'd added whipped cream and three cherries plus some of the tooth-rotting juice from the jar before he said, "You're not the only one, you know."

"This is really nothing like Captain Cold."

"Him? No. No way. Anyway, that's not what I meant. You're not the only one who doesn't want things to change."

It was tempting to think that they could carry on as they had, somehow - the two of them on comms and Barry saving the day and just everything the same.

"Haven't they always been changing, though?" she asked him. "Haven't we always had massive upheaval and new people and - and changes? Ever since the explosion?"

"Yeah, but we were the same."

She took a shaky breath and let the truth settle into her. She was changing. She could dye her hair and pretend she hadn't frozen her shower, but it was only covering up what she'd known ever since the first tendril of mist had floated off her hands on a ninety-degree day. "Now we're not."

He shook his head. "None of us," he said, and she knew he didn't mean just the two of them sitting there on the couch.

Barry had been the center of their lives since the explosion - first as the mysterious, anomalous coma patient and then as the man-become-demigod, bigger than them, faster than them, _more_ than them.

Now Cisco was becoming more, too.

And so was she.

It would change the dynamic of their trio. It had already been shifting with Cisco's powers, and now that she had powers too, she didn't know what Star Labs would become.

She _hated_ uncertainty.

"Do you think we can stay us? Even with - " She waved her hand between them.

"I think we can try," he said. "You willing?"

She nodded, and when he held out his mug, she clinked it with her own.

FINIS


End file.
